by Anas (Eddie) Yousif—

Part 1

In these last days of Ramadan let's talk about forgiveness. Hardly anyone denies that forgiveness is necessary in life, from other people and even more from Almighty God. But, have you ever stopped to ponder why it's so necessary and what the world would be like if there were no such thing as forgiveness? Why does everyone need to be forgiven in the first place?  Can't we just not do wrong? Further, does  everybody get forgiveness? Should they? We have all heard about people who refuse to forgive, and those who refuse to repent for their wrongdoing. What about a Holy God? Does he forgive everybody for any reason, automatically, or does He have conditions? Certainly He must have or forgiveness would mean nothing. So then, what are those conditions? These are the questions religion seeks to answer.

Part 2

In part 1 we demonstrated that the only way one may enter the kingdom of God (Heaven) would be through the blood sacrifice of a substitute. This can be seen in the story behind Eid al Adha found in the Tawrat and the Qur'an both. Al Adha, or sacrifice, was the ram that Almighty God required as a substitute for Abraham's son whom God initially commanded as a sacrifice to test Abraham's obedience. But was that the whole lesson? It would seem not. Even though Abraham passed the test of obedience, apparently the LORD had another lesson for him because he still required a blood sacrifice. But why? we should pause to ask. *That story can be found here: https://www.esv.org/Genesis+22/

by Christian Ledford, UM Dearborn student—

In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origins of Species, his magnum opus and the foundation of evolutionary biology, and changed the world. While many point to the publication of Origins as the point at which religion and science began to collide, it was merely a sign of the times; humanity’s descent into naturalism began earlier, in the Enlightenment of the 1700s in which scholars and scientists began to reject millennia-old Aristotelian and Biblical knowledge. Whereas anachronistic thinkers like Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, and too many others to name were devoutly religious, this age of naturalism saw a departure from theism in efforts to explain the world around us, and the universe as a whole, outside of intelligent design and outside of God.

*Extended since first published in the Michigan Journal of UM Dearborn in May of this year.

Visit the writer's website here: chefstoryteller.com

by Tom Bear–

What we could never do, God did!